The Homemaker's Confession

I've had a light bulb flicker on over the past couple of weeks, and it's been rather enlightening
{no pun intended}. :)

First of all, when I think of being a homemaker, I picture something like this in my head:

{source}

The house has to be perfect; the kid(s) have to be clean {heaven forbid one has a messy face left over from lunch}; dinner has to be on the table every single night; and I have to look simply marvelous while doing it all.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not bashing homemaking. Not in the slightest. I love my job and wouldn't trade it for anything! I'm just trying to point out that I constantly held my happiness hostage if I didn't live up to my every expectation.

We all do that in one form or another, but that's another post entirely. :)

{P.S. You should click on the source for the picture above for a good article about perfection and homemaking and how they REALLY don't mix. It's great!}

Just recently, Chuck and I took another in-depth look at our budget and saw where our spending was out of control. I'll spare you the gory details, but let's just say that the only kind of house we could comfortably afford while spending what we do on fuel and food is a one-room cardboard box. Maybe with an awning if we were lucky. One that would sag when it rained.

I thought I had been doing really good with cutting back on our grocery bill, but I obviously had some room for improvement. A lot of room. At first, I felt like a failure because I THOUGHT I was doing great, when I really wasn't doing too good. But I put on my big girl panties and decided to look at it as a new challenge instead of something that could depress me. How little could I spend while still feeding my family?

That, of course, took me on another journey battling my 'homemaker ideal'. I've always wanted to be the mom who has home-cooked meals for her family every night of the week. Something like this would suffice:

{source}

Maybe minus the huge turkey and random relatives. . . but, still.

So when my hubs and I discussed frozen burritos for lunches at work; sandwiches and tuna fish for dinner some nights; and only really cooking a meal every other night, I thought my ideal was done for. . . Held at knife point by finances and eventually butchered.

However, after taking a go at this new challenge of mine, I've discovered that being a homemaker has a lot more to it than having a beautiful, clean house. It's about how people feel when they come there; family, friends, neighbors, whoever.

You can have a beautiful, clean house without having a home.  

You can also have home-cooked meals without slaving over the stove all evening. The important part, after all, isn't about what's ON the table as who is sitting around it.

Capeesh?